It was a crazy day at work today. On top of being a Monday, and month end, we had a number of small crises hit right off the bat. The good news was that today was the first day for a new employee, the replacement for my employee who quit way back on Day 31. So not all bad, just incredibly busy.

Luckily my lovely wife had a fire going when I arrived home. On top of being a nice gesture overall, it’s just what I’ve been needing to return to the Flame theme. I tried a number of different images, though to be honest I was experimenting more than going after a particular pre-visualized image.

The image of the day is one of the last I made, a tight composition of an ember which found itself trapped between some much larger logs.

A glowing ember smolders in the midst of a fire.

Two bonus shots today, more for the interesting results of an experiment than anything else. The first is a fairly typical fireplace image, shot at 1/320th, which still isn’t quite fast enough to completely freeze (pun intended) the flames.

A fireplace viewed through a fast shutter speed.

I pretty much expected the results of the shot above. I also shot at a much slower shutter speed though, with the intent of capturing smooth flame motion, similar to what I was able to do with the candle flame. What I got instead was this:

A fireplace viewed through a slow shutter speed.

While there is some smoothing there, it’s nothing as profound as with the single candle flame. The really interesting thing was that while this shot is at 5 seconds, the effect is nearly identical anywhere from 1 second or so all the way up to 30 seconds. I’m curious what would happen with a really long exposure (I’m thinking several minutes), but without a neutral density filter of some sort I can’t get that slow. It’s something I’ll come back to though, for science’s sake if nothing else 🙂

4 Responses to Day 94 – 02/07/11 – Smolder

I love the detail in the first shot, embers have always fascinated me for some reason! I really like the smooth flames in the background, very nice photo Jim. I would say that I like the last photo more but the missing tip of the middle flame distracts me a tad too much. I find myself staring at the last one perhaps a little too much wishing it was warmer here (the furnace just kicked in…brrr). 😀 Looking forward to more flame shots.

Thanks David! I’m with you on the embers, I can sit and stare at them for hours. Very meditative. I hear you on the composition of the Slow Flame shot, just a touch wider would have been better – though it brings the upper bricks of the fireplace into the shot which I thought was even more distracting.